Circle Economy’s official Twitter chat (#circlechat) is back for a second edition, May 24, at 6pm (GMT+2). Harald Friedl, Circle Economy’s new CEO, and Alexandre Lemille, “Circular Economy 2.0” advocate and senior lecturer on the circular economy, will be taking questions and sharing their vision on designing inclusiveness into the circular economy.
Before joining Circle Economy in 2017, Harald spent 5 years in Myanmar, during which he co-founded Impact Hub Myanmar, headed the market development for the world market leader of electromechanical hydropower projects in the country and co-founded Myanmar’s first pre-incubation programme for social enterprises. Prior to moving to Myanmar, he lived in New York where he worked as the Head of Office for the Assistant Secretary General and acted as the spokesperson for the Deputy Prime Minister of Finance in Austria.
Alex is the founder of Wizeimpact, a for-purpose thrivability consultancy that leverages business-as-a-powerful-tool to find solutions to our social and economic challenges. In 2016 Alex was recognised as Highly Commended in the Circular Economy Leadership category by the World Economic Forum. He co-founded the African Circular Economy Network with the aim of promoting a socially inclusive approach to Circular Economy for the African continent.
Denim is loved across ages, genders, countries and styles. It’s the undisputed champion of garments. In the past however, the denim industry has been a large consumer of water, insecticides, pesticides, and energy as well as uses harmful chemicals in the dying/finishing processes. Now, with the incorporation of circular economy principles, the denim industry can become the sustainable, circular leader to spearhead a textiles revolution.Starting on the 17th of April, Amsterdam turned blue for an entire week. The city hosted 'Denim Days', a series of industry events, trade shows, seminars and a denim festival centred around the ever-popular indigo blue fabric. Our own Jade Wilting (Project Coordinator Circle Textiles Programme) spoke at The Blue Print Festival, on the future of denim, and explored the question, is there a future for denim without circularity? We see that while the denim industry as a whole has yet to become circular, competitive companies are moving in the right direction, with some frontrunners already firmly rooting their business models in circularity. We've collected 3 key insights about this transition below:Insight #1: The skinny on skinny jeansFrom stretch denim to rigid & raw
"We are happy to see skinny jeans slowly making an exit from the wardrobes of the masses - if not for their unforgiving silhouette, then for their stretchiness, which is a major barrier when it comes to circularity"Jade Wilting, Project Coordinator Textiles Programme
While we don't condone quick changing trends that create obsolete fashion monthly, we can't help but get excited about a growing demand for mono-material jeans and raw denim. Raw denim is the godfather of all denim. It is unwashed and characterized by its rigid structure and deep blue colour. In contrast, most of the jeans that we buy have been through a series of industrial washings to soften and add aesthetic effects to the trousers. Raw denim aficionados swear off washing their trousers for at least the first 6 months after purchase to get a natural fade, custom-made by one's own wearing. As you might have guessed, raw denim jeans need much less water in the production process, and the culture around raw denim lends itself perfectly to circularity. It's all about retaining the value of the jeans for as long as possible through repair, re-wear and less washing. The movement toward non-stretch, rigid denim is a move in the right direction when it comes to circularity. Insight #2: Salvage the SelvedgeThe latest development in closed loop denim
"Denim to denim has long been the holy grail of high-value recycling. Not only is it a compelling story for the consumer, but recycled denim also has the potential to offset the huge water impact that denim has, reutilise the indigo dye trapped in the material and reduce our dependency on virgin cotton."Gwen Cunningham, Programme Lead, Circle Textiles Programme
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MUD Jeans[/caption]Our hope for the future is for textiles to be consistently made, used, collected and reintroduced into the supply chain as raw material. In order to reach this goal, denim can’t be thrown away once it is deemed unfit to rewear. From a recyclers point of view, denim is an ideal material feedstock, as it's fairly consistent in colour (indigo blue), fibre composition (chiefly cotton) and construction (zippers and buttons are consistently on the top third of the garment, which makes cleaning more efficient).More recently, MUD Jeans and Recover, collaborated to turn old MUD jeans into new MUD jeans. They have pushed innovation to new heights by working to increase the percentage of recycled cotton that can be used to 40%. Previous research conducted by Circle Economy and G-Star showed that by including 12% recycled content in a pair of jeans, water usage decreased by 9.8%, energy consumption by 4.2% and the CO2 footprint by 3.8%. Just imagine what the impact would be with 40%, or even more, recycled content! Meanwhile, upcoming chemical recyclers are also experimenting with closed loop denim. Levi Strauss and Evrnu, a start-up chemical recycling technology company, have collaborated to turn post-consumer cotton waste into new denim. Using Evrnu's unique chemical process, cotton fibres are dissolved and reconstituted, before being spun into new yarn and made into new fabric. Insight #3: Cleaning up our actThe new production methods that improve impact Denim uses a ton of water in its lifecycle. According to Levi Strauss, 3,781 liters of water are used during the production and use phase of one pair of 501® jeans and 33.4 kg of CO2 is created throughout its lifetime. This includes growing cotton, processing the denim and washing at home. Minimizing these impacts requires producers to improve technology and consumers to think about how they care for their denim. MADE-BY created a wet processing benchmark that details the impacts from commonly used processing techniques and brings understanding and awareness to the impacts of this step in textile production. Stemming from the insights companies such as Jeanologia, a partner of MUD Jeans, have developed an Ozone technology that can be used in place of water intensive stone washing, drastically reducing the water, energy, and chemical usage in the processing phase of jean production. The result is worn or faded looks without the negative environmental or health impacts. Consistent colouration of recycled denim can be difficult to achieve and requires additional energy and water. Australian researchers have created a way to make denim-dyed denim, with help from the H&M Foundation to scale and commercialize this technology to use recycled denim as a dye source.
Wondering what you can do as a consumer? We’ve got you covered!
The denim industry has come a long way. Technological advancements continue to decrease its impact, but the next steps require the industry to adopt a more circular model. It is important to remember that true circularity requires thinking beyond decreasing the impact and considering how design, repairability, and recycling can play a role in circularity.
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Industry collaboration is key in catalyzing and implementing systemic change. Circle Economy, together with the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, House of Denim and MADE-BY are fostering collaboration through the Alliance for Responsible Denim, an initiative that brings denim brands together to collectively take steps towards improving the ecological sustainability impact of denim production.
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Though Harald is still getting used to the Netherlands’ unpredictable weather, his vision for the circular economy, commitment to scaling positive impact, and knack for mobilising the people around him have already made significant strides in renewing Circle Economy’s sense of purpose and in shaping up our future as an organization.
Harald has a keen focus on the social aspects of the circular economy, and we believe his experience working with governments and businesses around the world will support Circle Economy in its efforts to scale and internationalise. The sky’s the limit! — Robert Jan van Ogtrop, Founder of Circle Economy
Harald has spent the past five years fostering social entrepreneurship and bottom-up change in Myanmar, where he co-founded Impact Hub Myanmar. Always keen on making the most of his time and energy, Harald also co-founded the country’s first pre-incubation programme for social enterprises and headed market development for the market leader in electromechanical hydropower projects while he was there. Previously trained as a journalist, he has also served as the spokesperson for Austria’s Deputy Prime Minister of Finance and lived in New York during his time as the Head of Office for the Assistant Secretary General.Harald’s experience spans disciplines, sectors, and continents, and makes him a great fit for Circle Economy’s multi-disciplinary, cross-sector, international approach and community.To learn more about Harald’s vision for the circular economy and how society can play a role in fueling the transition, join us on Twitter for our next #circlechat, May 24th, 6pm (GMT+2). Not sure what #circlechat is? Check out our FAQ and highlights from our last chat for more information!
Circle Economy is launching their new Circle Design Program today. Part of a broader movement to accelerate the transition to the circular economy, the Circle Design Program aims to introduce businesses, designers, and entrepreneurs to circular design thinking and through a collaborative, on-the-ground approach, work with them to develop practical solutions to complex circular challenges.Circular design thinking is central to the transition to a circular economy.Although waste-reducing initiatives and other recycling efforts are still necessary in order to cope with the materials currently in use in linear supply chains, they are also ineffective and do not constitute a viable option in the long run. Resources can better be maintained and retrieved when products and components have been designed for disassembly, reuse, or remanufacture, for example — i.e. when they have been designed according to circular design principles. The need for retrieval is also mitigated when business models anticipate the pre-use, use, and post-use phases of their products.This is why it is critical for current businesses and the next generation of entrepreneurs, designers, and consumers to learn and adopt circular design thinking. It provides room for new perspectives, from future-proof, innovative business models, to regenerative products, services, and systems, where waste is minimised and loops are closed.Leveraging the versatility of circular design thinkingCircular design thinking isn’t exactly new. Design for disassembly, for example, is widely recognized for its direct relevance to the manufacturing industry and the benefits it provides when products are designed with ease of repair, upgradability, optimal reuse and high value recycling in mind. These benefits, however, are not exclusive to the manufacturing industry. Circular design thinking is relevant across industries and sectors and its versatility provides opportunities to any business aiming at future-proofing its activities. Understandably, it has been gaining a lot of traction.[hr]
Join our upcoming Business Innovation or our Circle Design workshops.
[hr]Circle Economy aims to introduce a wide range of industries and sectors to the advantages of circular design thinking. One of the first steps to achieving this was a recent collaboration with Dutch government-funded program Nederland Circulair! and our partners MVO Nederland, which allowed us to tackle the challenge of designing circular climate systems.Climate systems typically provide heating, cooling, and ventilation in buildings, and are traditionally not designed with disassembly, repairability, or modularity in mind. This often results in costly practices like the replacement of complete systems when only specific elements are broken. Circle Economy’s collaborative workshop approach allowed to uncover five circular design strategies that are not only applicable to the entire sector but also have the support of key sector agents to be implemented in the future.
Implementing circular design strategies in the circular economyClear, circular design strategies pave the way for and empower producers, suppliers, and designers to easily employ and apply them. Trade associations can leverage the ability these strategies have to nudge members and stakeholders along the circular economy track. Buyers, consultants, governments and clients can make informed decisions in order for their industry to benefit from circular design thinking. Industry associations (like the VLA, in the case of climate systems) and other parties in charge of developing industry standards and norms can adopt these strategies in order to set guidelines for designers and engineers to follow as part of product development standards. If circular design thinking is adapted in this sense, it has vast potential to enable positive change.Do you or your organization want to be one of the pioneers that get circular design thinking out of theory and into practice? Join one of our workshops.
The term 'closing the loop' continues to gain traction, from boardrooms to classrooms to living rooms. While the words are on everyone's lips, we may well ask why we have not seen a significant impact on business as usual. Why has the shift from a linear to a circular model been so fragmented, thus far?The truth is, while the bigger 'why' of a circular textiles industry is now well established, the 'how' is still unclear to many. In recent years, there has been a palpable increase in the industry's focus on improving the 1) collection and 2) recycling of post-consumer textiles. This work is spread across individual closed loop projects, and while they are achieving good results, these separate efforts can only amount to incremental change. The truth is, the industry currently lacks the broad foundation needed to close the loop for textiles. Without connecting the work, greater infrastructural bottlenecks will remain largely untouched. A systemic transition is necessary, and this will take collaboration across the entire textiles industry. Post-consumer textile collection is step one, but then what?The amount of textiles being produced and disposed of in inefficient ways is much higher than the amount that is collected and recycled. Recyclers throughout Europe indicate that only around 0.1% of all collected post-consumer textiles undergo high-value recycling. This means they are not regenerated into yarns, fabrics or garments but are downcycled into things like insulation - this is what's happening to the vast majority of non-rewearable textiles, when they even make it to the recycling process in the first place. The aim of a circular textiles industry is to keep materials and products functioning at their highest potential for as long as possible. Downcycling should be a last resort. Recent efforts of collecting and reverse logistics is one step in the right direction but not a complete solution. H&M came under fire from international press last year, with the leading accusation being that it would take the company 12 years to use recycled fibres from the 1,000 tonnes of used garments they aimed to collect during World Recycle Week. It is reported that in the past few years they have collected 13,600 tonnes of garments from consumers. This has led to a hard look at the industry today: If brands collect large volumes of post consumer garments that are mostly being downcycled, are they really doing the right thing?Pressure has been put on companies and governments to sign agreements to improve their garment collection and recycling efforts. This initiative is good, but it is only part of the solution. H&M is off to a good start, and the world should take note, but the industry must now address the steps after collection. The textile industry needs a solution for more efficient sorting of post-consumer textiles, and high value recycling technologies need a consistent and high-quality input for their processes. Until now there have been few options when it comes to supporting high-value recycling. We have actually been collecting more textiles than can be recycled into a high-value stream. The Fibersort, a technology that enables enable large volumes of post consumer textile sorting, is an exciting opportunity for the textile industry to get involved with and address this gap. It will lead to a tipping point for the high-value textile recycling industry and is a necessary part of the global infrastructure for a closed loop industry.So how is Fibersort part of the solution?An increase of low-quality fast fashion means the portion of rewearable post consumer garments is decreasing while the non-rewearable portion is on the rise. We need to support technologies that can tackle the growing fraction of non-rewearable textiles, and ensure that these precious resources make it back into the supply chain, at their highest value. The Fibersort is a technology that automatically sorts large volumes of finished textile products by fiber composition. This allows them to be recycled into new, high-quality textiles. Because most current and upcoming high-value recycling technologies require fibres of the same content to be recycled together, content purity is a major barrier - or is it an opportunity? Fibersort offers quality assured feedstock to recyclers. Essentially, there will be more control over what goes into the recycling process which means the quality of the output is greatly increased.
We have the technology and you have the perspective. Real change in our industry requires collaboration from us all! Are you a brand, retailer, manufacturer, textile collector, sorter, recycler or anything in-between? Do you want to be a part of something bigger that promotes the circular economy? There is a great need to address this current gap in high value textile recycling. Your feedback and ideas can help drive this innovation and bring change to our industry. Sign up to stay updated and informed of opportunities to provide your feedback on the development of Fibersort.
I want to be part of this change!
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On Thursday September 15th, the FIBERSORT project was announced as one of the few projects that will be funded by the INTERREG NWE programme for the next three years. With the support of INTERREG in the form of EUR 2 million, the consortium will further optimise the machine and demonstrate and validate this pioneering technology in the market. The project partners will add an additional EUR 1.5 million in funding to the project. Contact jade@circle-economy.com for more information about the Fibersort project.
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Today a broad coalition of Dutch companies, research institutes and organisations, including Circle Economy, appeal to the Dutch government to prioritise the SDGs within the upcoming government coalition agreement. All signatories, now already including 118 organisations, appeal to the current coalition negotiator Edith Schippers, to make sure that policy is aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to which the Netherlands has committed in 2015: “We - a coalition of companies and social enterprises - cannot stress the importance of the SDGs more as a tool to create a sustainable society now and for future generations. They are vital for our global society, but also enable a healthy and resilient Dutch Economy.After the Dutch elections in May, the appointed coalition negotiator Edith Schippers is meeting with all elected political parties to explore the common ground in the proposed election programme's. The coalition of Dutch companies and organisation is now appealing to negotiator Edith Schippers, to steer towards a government that prioritises sustainable policy and centralises our commitment to achieve the SDGs. By doing so, a more balanced world will be made more tangible - prioritising issues as the transition to renewable energy, (over) production and consumption, poverty, hunger, health, inequality and climate change on a local, national and global level. The signatories are appealing the new government to:
Read more about the participating organisations, the appeal to the Dutch Coalition Negotiator and how to join here (dutch).
We are very proud to welcome Brightloops, a true trailblazer in circular textiles, to our Circle Membership. Brightloops is working to produce circular yarn, felt and knitwear from 100% recycled old sweaters. Their products, sold under the label Loop.alife, prove that excess post-consumer garments can be transformed into beautifully designed, high value products.So, what does it mean for Brightloops to be ‘truly circular’? It means using post-consumer local waste as a source of input, sorting post-consumer excess by material and color to avoid unnecessary dyeing (saving chemicals, water and energy), and mechanically recycling this excess. They practice full transparency throughout all business practices, focus on local production and new developments within Europe, and not only have a zero waste policy but practice it through continual product development.
What is the next step for the textile recycling industry?Making more ‘closed loop fashion production’ circles. We are convinced we should not transport waste streams over the globe but should find closer circles that have the right economy of scale. This means more - new and existing - production facilities working closer together within the Netherlands/Europe to close the textile loop. This leads to ‘local’ knowledge creation, new designs (for recycling) and product development, which is to sustainably use our mountain of post consumer textile.What areas need further development and support?We need more medium-scale production facilities; from high value fibering, yarn development and knitting and weaving to produce high value end products of recycled yarn.Can companies not involved in the circular economy adopt the technology you use?Yes, Brightloops also helps other textile companies to produce 100% recycled knitwear or felt for their collection. We produce custom made yarn and ready to wear knitwear from their own waste streams using their own label. Anyone who is interested can contact us.What are your recommendations to further close the loop and what is needed for recycled fibers to be incorporated into mass-marketed garments?More marketing, sales support and demand for sustainable fashion. We need retailers and online portals that actively help and support the sustainable brands that make beautiful products in the first place and also have a good story that make you proud to wear it.
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Are you a changemaker? Learn more about our global network of innovators by clicking the link below.
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